As beams of soft sunlight stream across her bedroom walls displaying her past and present artistry, sophomore Saniya Mishra can often be found sprawled on the floor with a pencil in her hand. 

For hours at a time, the art of putting pencil to paper entrances Saniya’s creative mind. 

“Sometimes I sit down for an hour or two, and I’ll just draw something,” Saniya said. “I get so focused on it that I won’t even look away from the page for over an hour.”

From sixth grade, when her friends got into drawing, to now, when she has created a serious hobby of it, Saniya’s skills have improved and allowed her to have an escape from reality wherever she may be. 

In terms of what she likes to draw on paper, faces, figures, and hands have always stuck out to her—even from the very beginning. 

“I really like drawing hands,” Saniya said. “I especially love [to draw] my left hand because I am right-handed, so I just draw and look at my left hand and have it do something—I’ll look at that and draw it.”

With no art classes, besides the ones she took in middle school, under her belt, Saniya’s abilities solely come from the hours of practice she puts into the skill. She would love to take art classes at the high school, but her full schedule does not allow her the freedom to do that. 

However, she makes up for that in the sporadic lessons she learns from her mom, who also has a knack for creating beautiful art pieces. 

“It’s been a while,” Saniya said, “but sometimes we’ll be working on the same [canvas] but different parts of it—just a regular sheet of paper-sized canvas. Sometimes, we’ll go over each other’s parts because some things she’s better at and some things I’m better at. It’s kind of fun to work together.”

Saniya prefers drawing, while her mom is more into painting, and these differences make something special when put together. 

“One thing we did recently was we both painted the same thing on a different [canvas],” Saniya said. “[It was] fun because it shows our different styles.”

With two artists in the house, their home is decorated with carefully crafted works of art. Their dining room especially showcases just how much their works have evolved over time, with Saniya’s work, her mom’s work, and their combined works hung around the room. 

However, the display of Saniya’s work does not end there. She doesn’t always share her drawings with the world, but her room is an emblem of her life shown through the images.

“I show my friends some stuff occasionally,” Saniya said, “but [my drawings are] mostly just for me. My room, however, [has] drawings from over the years; not necessarily my best drawings—those just stay in my sketchbook—but the colorful ones or the ones that are maybe of my favorite character from a TV show or something like that, something that means a lot to me. I like to put those on the walls of my room, so they [are] all covered with random [things] from my fourth-grade art class, and it’s just up there.”